Here the patch notes for Wednesday's game update (as posted by Piestro on the EQ Forums):

*** Highlights ***

- Celebrate 14 years of EverQuest with our classic anniversary events, starting March 15th, 2013 and running until April 26th! - New missions, many created with your help at SOE Live 2012, are available starting March 15th, 2013, and lasting an additional month, through May 26th! The Mechanical Fortune Teller in the Plane of Knowledge will be happy to help players locate quest givers for these new missions. - Lady Carolline of Thex, located above the entrance gates in the city of Felwithe, can send you on a new adventure related to your existing epic items starting March 15th, 2013. She will be available year-round following this date. - NPC melee combat will no longer cause other NPCs to move. Players can still move NPCs and NPCs can still move players. - EverQuest has extended the benefits available to Free and Silver level players! See http://www.everquest.com/free for details!

*** Veteran Rewards ***

- Bristlebane's Jester has leveled up! - - Bristlebane's Gift will again fill up a health bar. - - Bristlebane's Surprise will again fill up mana and endurance bars. - - The Jester's Shape Change effect will no longer remove the target from their mount. - - The Jester will no longer hand out a stack of his bread or wine to players that already have bread or wine. - - The Jester will not offer his bread or wine to players who are in a raid. - - The Jester has learned some new jokes. - Staunch Recovery has leveled up! - - The effect of Staunch Recovery will again fill mana, hit point, and endurance bars. - The Steadfast Servant has leveled up! - - The Steadfast Servant's available buffs now scale to max level. - - - Buffs are roughly one tier below spells available to an equivalent level player, and last 15 minutes. - - The Steadfast Servant will no longer cast buffs on you if you already have a buff with that effect active.

*** Items ***

- Increased damage on many two-handed weapons from Rain of Fear. - Many items that were lacking the placeable flag can now be placed in housing as intended. - Many placeable items, including the paintings sold by Claire Nybright in Sunrise Hills, are now usable by all classes and races so they will no longer default to being hidden when browsing merchant lists. - A number of mounts, illusions and familiars that were unintentionally unable to be cast during combat have been fixed (Notable examples include the Dragorn War Mask, Party Popper Nimbus, and Doll's Mask). - The Gluttonous Spoon now has a more appropriate icon. - The Dioptase Fragment is no longer Prestige. - The Box of Chocolate will now always grant a treat, unlike life. - All races will now be able to display hair while wearing a pointy hat. - Updated the pointy hats to fit Vah Shir and Troll Females and Barbarian Males better.

*** Tradeskills ***

- New types of animal-themed helmets are available for crafting! Seek out the Matricks in the Plane of Knowledge for details, and animals throughout Norrath for materials. - The research recipes for Enchant Planar Alloy and Mass Enchant Planar Alloy should now use Runic Numen Plaque and Fine Runic Numen Plaque in their combines respectively.

*** Quests & Events ***

- Ritual of Terror - The spell Gorilla Roar has been returned to its intended duration. - The Corrupted Temple of Veeshan - Cekenar's Chain Lightning spell will no longer do extra damage to classes who can critically cast DoTs. - The Return of King Xorbb - The mission and raid no longer reset if players are outside of the encounter area. - The Return of King Xorbb (raid) - Saying "next battle" to Thistlebrush when you have already completed the first two raids in the zone will now teleport you to the proper location. - Danela's Stand (Mission) - The Ry`Gorr miners in this mission should now be a bit easier to kill. - Plans Gone Awry - Grolak's vision has improved slightly. He will now insist that there be a golem in front of him before he attempts the ceremony to raise it. - Be on the lookout for some new emerald-colored hats that will be available from March 17th to March 31st. - April 1st is Bristlebane Day! Keep an eye out for an Emissary of Bristlebane in the Plane of Knowledge, who will have a task for adventurers level 55 and up starting on March 31st. - The Mechanical Fortune Teller in the Plane of Knowledge will be happy to help players locate quest givers for the new 14th Anniversary quests. - Lady Carolline of Thex, located above the entrance gates in the city of Felwithe, can send you on a new adventure related to your existing epic items starting March 15th, 2013.

*** Spells ***

- Fixed many spells, such as Drakkin breath abilities and Remorseless Demeanor, which were incorrectly flagged to be unusable in the Plane of Sky, Kedge Keep, and Plane of Fear. - Ranger - Changed Flusterbolt/Blusterbolt to be Alteration spells to resolve an issue where they might proc one of the specialized arrows. - Rogue - Corrected Tome: Pinpoint Deficiencies so that it can be used to memorize the ability again.

*** NPC ***

- The fey swarm in Kael Drakkel: The King's Madness now spawns more frequently. - The black wolves in Al'Kabor's Nightmare now match their name.

*** AA ***

- Beastlord - Fixed a timer issue with Cheetah's Pounce causing conflict with Summon Banker. - Berserker - Reckless Abandon will now correctly trigger the chance spells after Recourse 2 fades. - Cleric - Fixed an issue with Touch of the Divine causing it not to work. - Cleric - Rebalanced the healing power of Touch of the Divine across all ranks. - Magician - Fixed an issue with Theft of Essence that was causing bane spells above level 83 to not work. - Necromancer - Removed mana regeneration from Blood Magic to resolve a conflict with Beastlord regeneration spells. - Paladin - Hand of Piety can now crit again. - Warrior - Phalanx of One's Proc is no longer interruptable - Warrior - Blast of Anger is now an instant ability to resolve a conflict with the Bazu Roar line. Hate values have been increased to compensate. - Wizard - Kerafyrm's Prismatic Familiar Rank 3 now has the correct description.

*** Achievements ***

- The Secrets of Faydwer achievement category has been removed for the time being. It will make its appearance again when the SoF achievements are ready. - Some rare items from event chests are now available on the raid merchants in Shard's Landing for those who complete the Conqueror of Rain of Fear achievement. - Achievements have been added for collecting Hero's Forge hat ornaments.

*** Progression Servers ***

- Rhenium Ore should now be dropping on Progression servers after Depths of Darkhollow is unlocked.

*** Zones ***

- The following non-combat zones have been changed so that buff timers are suspended and fall damage is negated: Nexus, Shadowrest, all neighborhoods and housing interiors, The Bazaar, The Plane of Knowledge, The Plane of Tranquility, and the Wedding Chapel. - Many changes were made to creatures in Chapterhouse of the Fallen to make the zone more playable. - - Wandering NPCs will be less restless. - - Researcher Vespra, rats, and timeworn servants are no longer aggressive towards players. - - The undead in the caverns have been moved around and their aggro ranges have been reduced. - - Reduced the aggro range on all oozles and beetles. - - Removed several NPCs from the caverns to create some safe areas. - Parts for new animal-based hat ornaments can be foraged in zones where those animals live. A particularly elusive example is rumored to live in and near the Jaggedpine Forest. Be wary, as foraging too long in one zone will spook the animals that live there.

*** Miscellaneous ***

- An unreachable Collection item spawn point in Chapterhouse of the Fallen has been moved. - An unreachable Collection item spawn point in Valley of King Xorbb has been moved. - The Evantil's Abode house has had its interior item capacity increased from 200 to 300 items. - Corrected an issue which caused the window on kilns and ovens to display as gray rather than transparent. - Added a "Sent" column to the Merchant window "Parcel" tab to display the date that a parcel was sent. - Fixed a grammatical typo in the item display window when inspecting real estate trophies. - Added the slash command /clearallchat. This functions just like /clearchat except that it clears the chat from all of your chat windows. - The quest reward message will no longer incorrectly display twice when only giving one reward. - Removed NPC on NPC melee "push". NPCs can still move players and players can still move NPCs. - Fixed an issue where /autoinventory was not properly updating the item icon when there were multiple items on your cursor. - Corrected an issue that was not allowing unflagged players to access Underfoot zones as intended.

*** UI ***

- Added some minimum sizes to some windows to prevent overlap and the accidental hiding of information. - Removed some unused UI XML files. - The bandolier window will now close when 'Esc' is pressed and it is the active window. - The "Player Studio" Marketplace category has been moved to be above "All Items". - Player Studio items will now appear side-by-side with SOE created items. - Added an option to the Options window to allow for the toggling of No Drop loot confirmations. This behaves exactly like the previously added /lootnodrop command.

- Corrected several warrior tomes that had been broken and could not be memorized. - Corrected an issue that was causing free-target heals to fail to cast. - Corrected an issue that could cause some players' arms to disappear when wearing Hero's Forge plate armor. - The new Warrior ability Heroic Blade should now affect all skills as intended.

Comments

at least i finally found out- through other players- that the little book was wrong. why don't they actually say what is needed instead of trying to be so darned cryptic. it is not tufts of fur that is needed, but tufts of (name of animal) fur - like tufts of gray wolf fur. and most can be foraged- which helped a lot- but it still took all day to make a couple of hats and not one head dropped- however, 8 tufts of (name of animal) fur plus one (name of animal) skull equals one head.

I am glad they made the skill 335 - a breeze with a maxed trophy of 345. still, the drop rate and forage rate could be way better. remember that these are gray con creatures so the time involved means no leveling or aas. just a long, boring day with very little returns.

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